Perhaps the most disturbing part in the Office of the Independent Police Review Director — reporting on police activity during the 2010 G20 Summit in Toronto — comes about a halfway through the almost 300-page document.

There, the universally respected Steve Paikin, host of TVO’s The Agenda and mediator of televised federal election debates, describes being escorted away from a protest by police. He saw another journalist — whom Paikin concedes was being “chippy” with police — being held by two officers, one on each arm. A third officer punches the journalist (whom Paikin didn’t recognize) in the stomach. After the journalist doubles over, the officer elbows him in the back, driving him to the ground. The officer escorting Paikin away comments, “Yeah, that probably shouldn’t have happened.”

No kidding.

The report, by director Gerry K. McNeilly, returns again and again to the issue of police planning, and suggests in numerous places that better planning would have led to a better outcome than the questionable arrests and tactics that marred the summit. The Toronto Police, and the other police forces that supported the operation, only had four months to plan their security operation.

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The rushed planning is an entirely logical explanation for some of the issues experienced in Toronto. The cramped and uncomfortable prisoner detention facility, for example, is singled out by McNeilly, who found that the Toronto police simply did not properly prepare for all the complex requirements for housing a sudden influx of prisoners. It also explains why police units, responding to acts of protester violence on the first day of the summit, had such a hard time coordinating their efforts. McNeilly recounts a disturbing incident in which two police units, responding to different commanders, split up, allowing an advancing crowd to suddenly envelop one of the units. If commanders and field officers had been in closer touch, such a potentially dangerous incident could easily have been avoided.

But rushed planning does not explain the truly disturbing incidents. The beating Paikin observed was not the only case of “excessive force,” a bland euphemism for police brutality. Nor is there an excuse for police officers conducting undocumented strip searches of prisoners.

Maintaining law and order is an important and challenging task, but liberal societies check the police — the very physical incarnation of state power — with procedures and rules for good reason, and these were clear violations of those normal procedures. A lack of preparedness certainly doesn’t justify the decision of some officers to remove their nametags — something McNeilly concluded was tolerated, if not actively approved of, by senior officers.

Hurried planning can explain — not excuse, but explain — glitchy communications and murky chains of command. But police officers beating and strip-searching citizens, while hiding their own identities, is a crime. How much extra time and planning do police officers need to not break the law?

No doubt there’s a lot that can be learned from the G20 about planning. But the real lessons are deeper, and more troubling. Four months might not be a long time to prepare for a major international summit, but it’s infinitely more time than officers will have to respond to a sudden emergency or outbreak of civil disorder. Rioters don’t announce their plans far in advance, but the police need to respond in the moment. If the public is to have faith in their police, the police need to signal — loudly and clearly — that they are capable of responding to the unexpected, without becoming worse than the mob they’re being sent out to control.

That doesn’t mean being perfect. But it does mean taking responsibility for the behaviour of rogue officers who, as McNeilly takes pains to point out, represented only a few of the thousands of officers present. Unfortunately, police forces across the country are loath to ever admit wrongdoing, and it’s too likely that the Toronto police brass will seize McNeilly’s acknowledgement that most officers acted professionally and use those words to ward off further criticism.

That’s unfortunate, both for the public and for our law-enforcement personnel. Police officers may not like turning in their own. But they’ll like what happens if the public loses faith in them and demands the government crack down on all police a lot less.

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